There is an ancient villa where desperate people have the opportunity to solve their fate by selling their body to a mysterious entity in exchange for money. When enormous, centuries-old creatures emerge from the deep woods surrounding the villa, a series of strange and sinister events push three unlikely guests to band together to attempt a desperate escape.
Here is something to keep an eye out for on the festival circuit this year, Fabio D'Orta's sci-fi drama, The Complex Forms. This independant production out of Italy had its world premiere at Torino at the end of 2023 and just played at Slamdance in January. Further festival dates are coming, keep your eyes peeled. In the mean time, check out the trailer down below.
D'Orta started production on The Complex Forms back in early 2020, then the world shut down for the pandemic. They completed filming after the first wave of lockdowns lifted. He directed commercials and video clips for Italian artists and international brands bedore shooting his debut feature film. He took care of the story, screenplay, direction, photography, editing and VFX by himself.
In a way the look that D'Orta has achieved here reminds me of the short film work of one of our own here in Canada, Come True director Anthony Scott Burns. That earlier work of Burns' put him on our radars. Will it do the same for D'Orta?
Here is D'Orta's director's statement,
There comes a moment in life when everything seems to collapse. A time when you tell yourself that everything is over and that the only form of redemption is represented by quiet submission. However, this suspension, this waiting, this anesthesia is always illusory, and above all it has a price.“The Complex Forms” tells of an existential limbo, experienced in an elegant twentieth century villa, where our protagonists are waiting for something and, as happens in life, they don't even know what's coming. However, an encounter occurs, an encounter that is a phantasmagoria, where cyclopean and majestic creatures, resonating with precious jewels and coming from places as ancient as time, put us face to face with the fact that in this world we are only evanescent guests.“The Complex Forms” is a flm that is both sober and excessive, where the sobriety and austerity of the unity of space coexist with the wonder and fantasy coming from an elsewhere, which has always been there, beyond the threshold of our perception.